


To the Ends of the Earth

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: I'm Peter, I'm 19 and I Never Learned to Read [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Angst, College Student Peter Parker, Deaf Harley Keener, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Force-Feeding, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Harley Keener & Peter Parker Friendship, Harley Keener is a Good Bro, Humor, Hurt Peter Parker, Kidnapped Peter Parker, Kidnapping, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Has Panic Attacks, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker has PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective May Parker (Spider-Man), Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Trans Peter Parker, deadnaming, selective mutism, that is the BEST tag on this whole website, there's a fair amount of cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: It doesn’t matter that every time someone sets down a plate of food in front of him, all he smells for an entire minute is the stench of poison, and he hears the growl of her voice as she grinds the mashed-up food into his face and covers his nose so he’ll open his mouth and swallow.Because he’s fine. He’s normal. It’s all over.He was only in there for seven days. Seven days is--it’s nothing. Tony Stark was trapped in a cave underground for months. The Winter Soldier was tortured and reprogrammed for years, like the Black Widow, who spent her entire life fighting the brainwashing of her upbringing, or like Captain Marvel, like--like--Like nothing.It’s nothing.He’s nothing.It’s all over, anyway. He’ll get over this.--Peter is kidnapped and tortured by a crazed Oscorp scientist hellbent on revenge for losing her job over the lost spider. For Peter, the real horror is being at home and coming to terms with his trauma. He's normal, he repeats to himself over and over, until he can't convince himself anymore and he breaks. Luckily, Tony, May and Harley are always there to catch him.
Relationships: Harley Keener & Peter Parker, Harley Keener & Peter Parker & Tony Stark, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: I'm Peter, I'm 19 and I Never Learned to Read [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1394110
Comments: 38
Kudos: 209





	To the Ends of the Earth

**Author's Note:**

> me, sipping my peach raspberry tea, glasses not cleaned in the last three weeks: this is gonna be, like, 9k of Peter denying his trauma, so jot that down,
> 
> Yeah so this series is definitely headed more for Angstville and Hurt 'n' Comfort Town than Crack City. It's just the way things be sometimes. I was rereading iron_spider's More Peril in Thine Eye and was overcome with the demanding need to write my own torture aftermath fic with my own two bastard hands. I'm not very fluid in descriptions of actual whump, but I'm more than capable in emotional hurt/comfort, so that's what you'll get.
> 
> Also, I haven't finished the installment in this series where Harley goes deaf and deals with that, but I'm writing it and will post that in the proper order to go before this one. Just know that my personal knowledge of ASL is a bit limited, but I am Deaf myself and am projecting my own experiences on Harley with this headcanon.
> 
> Scroll down to the endnotes for trigger warnings, if you'd like! I want you always to stay safe, my fluffy mushrooms :)
> 
> Theme song and title inspiration: ["Make You Feel My Love" by Sleeping at Last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UkXdvh5Xa0)

"I need to see him."

"You don't have armor."

"I don't need armor. He doesn't wanna see armor. He's gotta see me."

Tony's faceplate opens with a whir, and his visage is lined. So many lines, so many creases. "No. _No._ I've--I've already lost one of you, more than once. I am not gonna stand by and see you get hurt, too."

Harley juts out his chin. It's pathetic, ludicrous, the gesture of young and defiant manhood, when his overgrown bangs flop in his eyes. "Call off yer one-man hypothetical guilt show, Tony. He ain't gonna hurt me."

"You don't _know_ that," Tony seethes. "No. My answer is final. Stand _down_ , Harley. We've got this."

Tony never calls him Harley, not by his actual honest-to-God baptism name, not unless it's a gun about to go off or the sky about to cave in or, in this case, when he's about to see his brother stumble into the light in shackles, probably, from some creeper's basement. He only calls him Harley when it counts. At all other times it's _Popcorn_ or _Grease Monkey_ or _One-Man Bomb Squad_ or--or--and this is how anyone could tell Peter Parker is in the room-- _Teen Miscreant Number 2_.

"He needs me," Harley says around heavy breaths.

"He does. I know he does. He just--just not--he'll need you when he wakes up again, okay?"

Despite it all, despite the tremor crawling up and down the veins in Harley's arms and the ice-sharp pick of fear up his spine, Harley manages a sharklike smile not unlike Tony's on Monopoly night. "How much you wanna bet he faints in my arms?"

"He won't," Tony says sharply. An inhale, just as shaky but resolute "He's gonna faint on me."

"Huh. Ten bucks, I say he's gonna mention all the homework he's missed before he does."

"Ten bucks, one hundred, whatever. Anything to get you to stick your ass on that couch. I'm leaving now."

"Nuh-uh, now I gotta come with and make sure you don't screw me over on the bet."

Tony's eyes are chocolate, swimming, wide and wet with pain. "Harley," he whispers. "Please. I know what you're doing."

"I'm coming."

"Harley."

"I'm _coming_."

"Harley _James_ Keener."

Moisture springs to the boy's eyes, stinging. "You didn't get the inflection right. You didn’t--my momma always would say--"

Confusion clouds Tony's face for a moment. "What--"

"Tony." That's Nat's low tone from the doorway, an undercurrent of sympathy framing her urgency. "Time to go."

Iron Man's faceplate snaps shut, and Harley has to clamp down so viciously on the urge to scream that his nails dig crescent trenches into the flesh of his palms.

"That's not fair," he gasps out. "That's not _fucking_ fair." His other hand flies up to adjust the hearing aid at his right ear, but he still can't make out the space between the tinny words of Tony's words uttered through the iron suit.

"It'll be an hour, tops," Nat pauses to say, glancing over her shoulder long enough so Harley can read her lips. She owes him that much, this ragged boy with his haggard face and his three-day-old flannel shirt and broken Converse. They both know it.

\--

It turns out they were both, for the most part, off the mark with the bet. 

Harley doesn't hear anything--he can't hear shit in this technological hell of mechanical sounds and voices warring with his hearing aids--but the light installed over his bedroom door flashes purple, three times, and he knows that's the code for a friendly touchdown on the roof of the Tower. And before he can even blink, he's on his feet and tearing down the hallway with one foot bare and the other shoved painfully halfway into his sneaker with the heel smashed in.

Peter's awake. Peter's awake and--he's standing, no, swaying, somehow still on his own two feet there on the roof in the wind and the irreverent broad daylight, while Iron Man has his hands on his shoulders from behind to steady him.

Tony retracts his faceplate faster than Harley can open his mouth. The tortured expression of apology is etched all over the man, even before he turns his eyes to Harley: a silent _sorry_ for taking the low road and shutting out the boy earlier when he didn’t have the advantage of easy communication.

"He didn't pass out once," is what comes out of Tony's mouth instead. His tone holds wonder, sorrow--maybe a hint of fondness mixed with horror.

Harley stumbles closer to them. He doesn't quite know how his legs are working right now, how his back and feet are supporting him, how he hasn't just spontaneously combusted from the sight of Peter there between him and Tony like he's seen the zombie apocalypse and decided he'd still rather come back and fuck around in this timeline than any other one.

"It took you an hour and twelve minutes," Harley says. He means it as an accusation, but when his heart is jackhammering like it is and he sees his brother’s skin pale and splashed with blood the way it is, even he gets his goddamn inflection wrong.

"At least I'm not gonna--not gonna miss that calc quiz on Friday," Peter croaks. "Harls. Harls." And then he's crumpling, he's folding, and Tony is yelling but Harley doesn't know what because he isn't looking and the wind is whipping around them, and all that matters now is springing forward to catch the other boy by the armpits before he smashes into the concrete and becomes a puddle of pigeon poop or something right then and there.

Peter's an absolute deadweight. Harley crashes on his knees from the load. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't--

"Tell me you got the fuckers," Harley chokes out. There's crimson in Peter's hair, matting his curls, and there is purple and emerald green on his cheekbones and jaw and around his throat and wrists where it doesn't fucking belong.

"Tell me you got them. Tell me you--did you--"

"Torched the place," Nat says as she appears at the top of the staircase leading up to the roof. Because Tony is frozen--no, not quite, he's shaking, they're all shaking in different ways and to different degrees--and words have seemed to fail him.

"Burned the entire thing down," Nat confirms with a nod. "Too easy, too quick for her, if you ask me. But we did what we could. And not before I at least tried to even her ledger. My way."

 _Her_. Harley doesn't know why that makes him blink. Of course torturers can be women, evil scientists can be women, hell, he remembers when Peter was telling him about--

His eye is distracted by Tony swallowing in the periphery of his line of vision. The movement is convulsive.

"Thanks, Nat," Harley says softly. "And--Tony. Thanks."

"I didn't do shit," Tony says, raw.

"You got him back," Harley says fiercely. "You got him back. Tony, just--get in here."

The man does, tripping over the boots of his own suit with a clang. Harley rises in his knees to meet him halfway, and with his left hand he yanks Tony in for the hug of a lifetime. They form an awkward sandwich around Peter, who's still out cold and stinking something fearsome between them. It still makes Harley's blood boil but the fucker is dead and he didn't even get a lick in--Tony probably did, for him, but not enough, nothing will ever be enough--so they have to stay like this, forced to be content. Forced to face the relentless optimism of recovery staring them in their faces. Forced to smile like it’s over, when they both know to their very core it will never be over.

Tony hiccups against Harley's shoulder. For a moment Harley reins in a hysterical laugh, before he realizes that he, too, has snot drizzling down his face like the goddamn Niagara Falls or something and they're all wet and filthy and sorry and a little bit scared.

"You owe me a hundred bucks," Harley says.

The man rasps, "I owe you what now?"

"The bet. You lost. I told you he was gonna mention the homework. Freakin'--nerd."

"Whatever. A hundred bucks."

"Plus ten. Because he fainted in my arms, not yours."

"I carried the gosh darn kid with my own two hands for twenty miles--"

"A hundred and ten. You plannin' on quibbling and making it a hundred and twenty?"

"You're a miscreant," Tony breathes into the boy's shoulder, with the same fondness he might be cursing out his best friend at three in the morning on a random Friday at MIT. " _Miscreant_. I'm promoting you to Miscreant Number 1."

"You're the actual fool for thinkin' I wasn't Number 1 this whole time."

\--

Peter awakens to the onslaught of sensation all around him.

The creak of the easy chair to his left is what first roused him. FRIDAY’s heating and cooling system, normally so quiet, is humming like a swarm of locusts in his ears. There must be a draft in the room or in the hallway or--or down the way in another room somewhere, because he can sense it, he can feel it, the slip of a breeze from hundreds of yards away. Light bears down on him with a vengeance through his eyelids. Neon patches, warm and uncomfortable. Footsteps pacing from three floors down--that would be someone in the communal kitchen. The beating of several hearts all around him, too quick, too panicked, suppressed under a mask of normalcy. Somebody’s whistling breath as they sleep.

It all spirals on him, and he’s freefalling backward into the mattress and the cotton and the--the nothing. His eyes slam open.

“Pie Bear,” says May, at his side. She’s the one in the easy chair.

She hasn’t called him that since thirteen years ago when he came home crying because Jill Heathers laughed at his show-and-tell.

“ _Pie Bear_ ,” she says again, more softly, fervently, as wetness fills her eyes but doesn’t dare brim over because she is May Linetti Parker and tears don’t fall down her face unless she tells them to.

Peter nods. He waves his hand in the air for her--everything is bright, unstable, illusory--the polar opposite of what seven days was like being drugged up to his eyeballs--and he can’t seem to find her on his own until she leans forward and captures his fingers in hers.

Peter blinks, twice, three times, slowly and deliberately, and he turns his head from one side to another to take in his surroundings while holding himself in against the sensory overload, the dam that’s about to break.

“FRIDAY? Dim the lights to ten percent, please.”

The boy swallows, half out of guilt. May has gotten _so good_ at this, unreasonably so. This isn’t normal. She shouldn’t have to know how to take care of his overloads, his panic attacks, be able to hold his hand with a little smile while he’s lying there on the verge of a freakout because he’s just been dragged to hell and back by a mad scientist who wanted to scrape every corner of his body for his DNA.

It’s all so unfair.

May uses her other hand to smooth the hair from his brow, as if sensing the turmoil in his thoughts. “Try not to overthink, baby. I’m here. And Tony--Tony’s downstairs in the kitchen, I think, he’s chopping carrots and making salad with Natasha…”

Well, that’s a mental image Peter doesn’t get every day.

May continues, nodding over her shoulder at the sleeping form curled up in the other chair, just outside Peter’s field of vision, the silhouette he didn’t notice before but whose heartbeat he sensed earlier. It’s Harley, face half hidden behind his arms crossed over his chest. His mouth is open and it’s definitely wet with drool. He has on the same ratty Queen hoodie from Tony that he was wearing the day Peter was taken. He’s in his jeans, too, which must be uncomfortable, it occurs to Peter tangentially.

“I told him he should take off his hearing aids or he’d get a migraine in the morning,” May murmurs conversationally. “But he’s just as stubborn as his mom. His mom and dad both, combined, and maybe Tony’s metaphorical DNA got mixed in there, too, for better or for worse. He said he wanted to be the first to hear your stinky ass whining about breakfast when you woke up.”

Peter’s face scrunches up into an unwilling chuckle. Only Harley.

May looks back at him, biting her lip. “Is it another no-talking day, huh, Peter?” She doesn’t say it accusationally. Just knowingly. Because Peter gets like this, he talks and he talks and it gets him into trouble nine times out of ten but it’s the one endearing quality of his that sticks out to other people when they meet him--until his parents die, or until Skip happens, or Ben gets shot in a Jiffy Stop, or Peter gets snatched and strapped down and drugged and--and words begin to fail him. 

Peter doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He doesn’t. It’s almost as if the muteness will be cemented in his vocal cords the instant he nods yes. But May is looking at him expectantly, with such tenderness and understanding, that he finds he has no choice but to move his head up and down in the affirmative.

To her credit, nothing changes in May’s face. Only an infinitesimal twitch of her lower left lashline. “That’s okay, Peter. Nothing wrong with that. It just...takes time. I’ll give the others a heads-up, if you like, so you don’t have to face that awkward conversation on your own.”

Peter nods again. His gaze locks with hers, in a depth of understandings and questions and unspoken emotions. Finally he lifts his right hand in the formation of a Y.

May huffs out a laugh. She didn’t take the ASL class with Peter and Tony and Harley over the past summer when Harley went deaf, but she knows the basics. “I love you too, Pie Bear.”

Peter wrinkles his nose.

His aunt rolls her eyes. “You are a pie and you are a bear. Petey-Pie Bear.”

Peter groans under his breath like an ultimate teenager. Not a young superhero scraped thin over trauma and bones with bruises ringing the same hand he just used to sign _I love you_ at her.

May pats the side of his cheek. “I’m gonna go down and grab Tony, okay? I know the poor guy’s been waiting for me to come down and fetch him. Doesn’t wanna look too desperate or overwhelm you.”

Peter rolls his eyes half-heartedly. May leans over him to press a sloppy kiss to his forehead, and then she shoves her feet into her cable-knit slippers and shuffles out of the room, shutting the door behind her with a click.

The instant May is gone, Harley’s eye pops open. It’s so comically timed, so un-coincidental, that it rips an irreverent snort from Peter.

“Petey-Pie Bear,” Harley singsongs, voice cracking from disuse but still every bit as embarrassing for Peter as he can be. “Petey Pie. Pie Bear. Beary Bear. Petey Peter Pie Bear--”

Peter slaps his hands over his eyes. There’s a tug on his left arm from the IV stuck in there. He glares at it through the fingers covering his face.

Harley stumbles to his feet and comes over, flicking at Peter’s knuckle to get the other boy to uncover his face. “C’mon, defend yourself, ya old webhead. I know you can sign as fast as me if you wanted to.”

Peter seems to consider that for a moment, and then he lifts his hands away from his face to flip Harley the bird with a cranking gesture.

Harley’s answering laugh is raucous. Unsteady, a spurt of mirth that doesn’t belong here, but welcome to Peter’s ears. “Sometimes I call you a fuckin’ nerd, Pete, but then God herself decides to put me in my place and shows me you can go and pull shit like that. I’m so--I’m so proud of you.”

“So proud of him for what?” Tony says quickly from the doorway. He’s got one arm laden with salad that looks too noble and overdone for the occasion. They’ve all turned into a freaking Martha Stewart special.

Harley jumps with a curse and a hand over his heart. “So proud that Pete here is a superhero in skin-tight leggings and not a--not a meddlin’ Olive Garden server wannabe like you.”

Tony sniffs and walks in briskly, shutting the door as he does so. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Olive Garden servers far outclass me.”

“Yeah,” says Harley. “And they all could really use way more benefits.” No one in the room touches on the direct implication that he’s referring to his mother, who has been a server all her life on top of numerous other side gigs.

“Pete,” Tony says, setting down the bowl on the dresser. He comes over and kneels at the kid’s bedside. “Hey. Hey, buddy. How’re you doing?”

Peter flashes him a wobble of a smile. _Normal, normal_ , his brain chants at him. _Be normal. You are normal_. A shrug is what he offers in response. “I feel like God played hopscotch on my insides,” he signs.

Harley barks out a laugh a beat later. At Tony’s knit-brow look of consternation, Harley puffs out another giggle and translates for him.

“Oh, yeah, that’d be the drugs, buddy,” Tony deadpans. “That loon had you doped up on all sorts of combinations. She had access to--to _classified_ shit, and I swear to God, if not for your freaky DNA, by all accounts you shouldn’t be here right now after one shot of whatever alien cocktail it was she put in you.”

“That’s real encouraging,” Harley says from behind him.

Peter licks his lips and eyes the bottle of water that Tony brought in with him. The man springs to his feet, muttering a litany of apologies, and cracks open the bottle and lifts Peter’s head with a gentle hand to help him sip. Unconsciously, against his own will, Peter flinches.

“Sorry, fuck, sorry,” Tony says. Water sloshes over the sides of the bottle and spills everywhere. Harley jumps up to grab the bottle from Tony’s shaking hand.

Peter shakes his head. Tears are stinging his eyes, for real now, for the first time since he woke up. “I’m sorry,” he signs, over and over.

“I didn’t mean--I thought--I didn’t realize,” Tony stammers. “Here. You think you can hold it and drink it on your own?”

Peter’s hands shake worse than a foal’s legs on her first walk in the stable, but somehow he finds the will within him to take the bottle from Harley, and to bring it to his own mouth and drink. Once the sweet, cool water hits his tongue, he grows greedy, and he gulps it down like it’s his last meal on earth. Tony chuckles uneasily, but thinks better of it and refrains from urging Peter to slow down.

“Thank you,” Peter manages to get out, aloud. The sound of his voice is all wrong. It’s not him. It’s not normal, it’s not him, he should never have opened his mouth--

But the way Tony’s eyes light up almost makes it worth it, almost makes up for the coil of the snake in the pit of Peter’s stomach at hearing his own voice in his ears.

\--

 _Thank you_ are still the only two words Peter has uttered aloud since the joke about the calc quiz up on the roof, and since he woke up in his bed in the Tower hooked up and reeling and feeling for the first time in forever that he’s actually present. Actually alive.

He almost prefers the numbness and the confusion, sometimes, the senseless detachment from the world interrupted only by the bodily need to eat or piss. And simultaneously he hates himself for it.

Because he should be grateful. He should be glad he’s back, that in the span of a day he’s able to walk again on trembling legs. That he can move his arms and there are no weights around his wrists and he can think and dream and type out texts to Ned and MJ or pick up a book and start reading.

It’s just that it’s all so much. It’s everything, all at once. And the better part of him knows that no one expects him to be okay--hell, they all jump like startled rabbits when he slinks into a room, as if the sight of them setting the goddamn table or something is going to trigger him--but Peter feels that inexplicable pressure to _be_ okay. _Be_ normal. Just be--be there already.

Because this whole recovery business is bullshit. He doesn’t even have nightmares, not on most nights, and the bruises are already long faded his skin. It doesn’t matter that he can still feel the ghost of her fingers there sometimes when he’s minding his own fucking business and washing his face and the tap water from the faucet happens to run over his wrists. It doesn’t matter that the sound of Karen’s voice one night, when Tony has her hooked up to FRIDAY to download the weekly updates, makes Peter freeze up in the hallway and sends him miles away to a time when the AI’s broken voice felt like it was screaming in his ears--

_Connection to FRIDAY interrupted. Unable to contact Tony Stark. System rebooting in five, four, three, two--_

_Karen, try again! Please! No no no, don’t shut down--!_

_System rebooting--_

And it definitely doesn’t matter that every time someone sets down a plate of food in front of him, all he smells for an entire minute is the stench of poison, and he hears the growl of her voice as she grinds the mashed-up food into his face and covers his nose so he’ll open his mouth and swallow.

Because he’s fine. He’s normal. It’s all over.

He was only in there for seven days. Seven days is--it’s nothing. Tony Stark was trapped in a cave underground for months. The Winter Soldier was tortured and reprogrammed for years, like the Black Widow, who spent her entire life fighting the brainwashing of her upbringing, or like Captain Marvel, like--like--

Like nothing.

It’s nothing.

He’s nothing.

It’s all over, anyway. He’ll get over this.

\--

It all comes to a head the night Harley hands him the wooden box with his T-shot supplies in it. It’s been quiet, uneventful, a day relatively free of emotional upheaval. Ned Facetimed Peter from his dorm room about three times today, and Peter was able to hold a proper text conversation with MJ without breaking into hives or anything. The movie is over, the credits long scrolled away from the screen. Tony and May are downstairs in the kitchen, clattering around and washing dishes, because she’s like his second wife and the both of them feel better making clumsy domestic noise together so they can pretend they aren’t just bonding over their shared trauma about Peter.

Harley is the only one left on the floor besides Peter. Peter is cross-legged on the carpet, alphabetizing Tony’s box of vinyls from the ’80s. His hands need something else to do besides remember how they tore uselessly at his own skin for seven days to escape from his chains.

Harley scratches the back of his head and stretches, the edge of his chick-embroidered shirt riding up at his waistline. He drops down onto the carpet next to Peter and hands him the T box. “Here. I’m not sure if you’ve been keeping up with it or whatever, but--I figured you would wanna get back on this. ’Cause, you know. You still kinda need your shot of masculinity and all that.” He winks at Peter with an enviable ease.

“Thanks,” Peter signs, tapping his chin sloppily. He drags the box across the floor toward himself. His fingertips leave dewdrop-shaped stains in the layer of dust on the cover.

“Y’know, you being quiet has been real easy on my ears,” Harley says from behind half-lidded eyes. 

Peter snorts. Leave it up to Harley to joke about his own deafness and Peter’s mutism in one stroke, and somehow manage to not offend either of them.

Even with his eyes closed, anyone could tell Harley is rolling his eyes at Peter’s reaction. “I’m serious. Now Tony only has to deal with me bein’ a little shit around here. God knows _Tony_ yaps nonstop like a nervous kangaroo, and throwing you into the mix just makes everything exponentially worse.”

“That’s ’cause you can’t handle more than two geniuses being in the room,” Peter points out.

Harley’s head jerks up in surprise. Even Peter is shocked at the sound of his own voice. He’s missed this. He’s...missed himself.

“Jeez, I guess God really couldn’t give me one more day of peace and quiet from you, huh?” Harley says. His words are clipped, rapid, as if he’s rushing to get it all out because the sound of Peter finally speaking again in more than monosyllables might have all been a dream.

“You haven’t done much to make God owe you, y’know,” Peter says. He is, perhaps, smiling just a little bit.

“Yeah, well, God kinda owes _you_ ,” Harley says, half-sourly. “Seriously, can’t you catch a break?”

Peter shrugs. He toys with the box in his lap. “It’s kinda on-brand with the whole Avengers thing. Ask Tony.”

Harley exhales noisily. “Yeah, we love Tony, but like--you’re a child.”

“I’m nineteen.”

“Again: _child_. There’s a reason Tony calls you Spider-Diapers.”

“Fuck off,” Peter says distractedly. He pops the lid open. “Hey, can you help me with this real quick?”

“Uh--sure, I guess.” Harley scoots closer. “I thought you do this on your own, though.”

“Yeah, no--yeah, for sure, I do, but--y’know.” Peter holds up a hand to Harley’s eye-level to show him the uncontrollable tremor there.

“Say no more,” Harley says magnanimously. He dives for the syringe inside, waggles his brows at Peter, and then promptly stops, looking stymied.

Peter rolls his eyes and shifts to lift the edge of his tee to expose his stomach. “I usually pinch this and stick it in here--like this--”

After a couple of run-downs of the verbal instructions, Harley thinks he has it down pat. He flicks the syringe and brings the needle close to the bit of tummy skin rolled between Peter’s fingers.

Suddenly Peter’s sharp intake of breath from above his head gives him pause.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Peter gasps out. “Just--gimme a minute.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll give you, like, all the minutes,” Harley stammers back. “What’s--what’s wrong? You good? What happened?”

Peter has his eyes screwed shut and his mouth pressed into a line. He releases his hold on his stomach in favor of drawing both hands down his face. His chest rises and falls, breaths quickening convulsively.

Harley drops the syringe and straightens on his knees to pat the sides of Peter’s face. “Hey, hey, hey, just breathe. Just breathe. It’s okay. Whatever the hell is goin’ on, it’s--everything’s okay. You know where you are? Huh? Stop spiraling, you’re safe here. You’re in the Tower. You ain’t there. They blasted her to pieces, remember? Do you remember that? No--wait--shit. Okay.” New tactic. “I’m here, Pete. I’m here. Just use your...superhearing to listen to my heartbeat.”

Peter whines, low in the back of his throat, but he seems to be trying to follow Harley’s clumsy instructions.

“I’m not--I can’t--”

“Yes, you _are_ , and yes, you _can_ ,” Harley breathes hotly, not even caring about whatever the hell it is that Peter was trying to convey.

“C’mon, Petey. You can breathe. Slow and steady, yeah? Huh? Keep breathin’.” Harley runs a hand through his own hair, quickly approaching a little freakout of his own. “FRIDAY? Uh--uh, FRI, should we get Tony in--”

“No, no, no, no,” Peter moans. “Don’t get Tony. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you’re about as fine as a tomato frog pinned down and drownin’ in formaldehyde--”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Peter insists between his teeth. “Please. _Please_. Don’t get Tony. I’ll be--I’ll be okay in a second.”

Harley, against his better judgment, because all Peter needs to do is give him one look with those damn puppy eyes and he’ll cave, agrees.

The seconds pass tensely. Finally, five minutes go by, and Peter’s lungs begin to stop shivering. Peter lowers his hands from his face and starts assaulting his eyes with his knuckles to dry them off.

“Thanks,” he hiccups. “Fuck. _Fuck_. Why the fuck am I _crying_.”

“Oh, hm, that might be because you just got rescued from some Cruella de Vil’s sex dungeon, and I was gonna stick you with a needle the size of a paring knife,” Harley deadpans.

Peter takes one look at him, his mouth twitching in some messed up sort of mirth, and bursts out crying all over again.

“Also, your hormone levels are probably off,” Harley adds helpfully, as he rubs his hand up and down Peter’s goosebump-ridden arm.

“I need my shot of masculinity,” Peter hiccups at him. “God--can I just, like, _burn_ my lacrimal glands or something.”

“Psh,” Harley scoffs at him. He’s managed to school his facial expression into something alarmingly normal. He nudges Peter’s butt with a toe, so the other boy scoots forward and he can drop down behind him and scoop up Peter into his lap there on the carpet. “You really wanna do that? Then who’s gonna do the Whisper Challenge with me on YouTube for the views and end up laughing his butt off so hard that he cries? Huh, Pete? You selfish wank.”

“I hate you,” Peter warbles.

“Love you too,” Harley grumbles. He squeezes his arms around Peter’s upper body, lifts a hand to run it through the back of Peter’s curly hair.

“Seriously, I need my drugs,” Peter mumbles.

“Drrrrugs,” Harley says throatily into his ear.

“You know I freaking hate that Vine.”

Harley feigns a gasp. “Say it ain’t so.”

“Gimme my _T_.”

“Not until you take that back.”

“No,” Peter says petulantly. “I’m gay and this is a hate crime.”

“Been there, done that. _Take it back_.”

“Take what back?” Tony materializes in the doorway, as he is wont to do these days in the middle of the boys’ shenanigans. Harley twists around, still unwilling to release his hold around Peter’s torso. Peter himself has latched onto his arm with one hand, cold and unnervingly small.

Tony’s gaze dips down to the weird pretzel-like position his kids are in. “Everything good?” he asks slowly.

“Everything under control,” Harley says breezily. “Peter here was just questioning the existence of tear ducts, as if the good Lord’s design in Creation wasn’t all things perfect and holy.”

Peter’s still pouting at that when Tony moves closer and lowers into a crouch in front of them. Tony pushes back the hair from the kid’s brow. Seems like a lot of the adults around them are doing that to him these days. “Yeah, I wouldn’t say you’re holy, not by a long shot, but you’re definitely perfect,” Tony says matter-of-factly.

“I’m all snotty,” Peter sniffles.

If Tony is jumpscared by the sound of the kid’s voice after a week of veritable silence, he masks his nerves well. They’ve all gotten eerily good at that these days.

“Yeah, kid,” says Tony. “You’re perfect especially when you’re snotty.”

\--

May might be used to Peter’s mutism coming and going in waves, but she nearly drops her tray of overcooked Hershey kiss cookies on the tiles when Peter shuffles in and greets her good morning.

The next thing Peter knows, he is engulfed in May’s arms and May’s scent: salt and lemon, and crinkling brown paper, the kind you recycle from packages in the mail and reuse to wrap last-minute Christmas presents.

“You’re good, you’re okay,” May murmurs over and over in his ear. She strokes the back of his head with her hand once. “Good morning too, sweetie. I hope you had a good sleep.”

“Decent,” Peter hedges. They pull apart to bend down and start picking up the still-hot pieces of dough and chocolate from the tiles.

Peter watches her from the corner of his eye. May’s movements are clumsy but familiar, as they have always been. Her arms are sinewy. Her auburn hair is tied up in that messy bun she can never perfect, always with two hair ties, the tan one and the brown one that’s stretched out beyond recognition. She has the same clear plastic eyeglass frames slipping down her nose.

He knows this. He knows _her_. But every time his gaze slides over May too fast, a little too confidently, the image before him shimmers and morphs, and from one moment to the next he goes from here to _there_ and all he’s seeing is _those_ brown eyes and _those_ sharp cheekbones and that perfect chocolate bun piled on top of _her_ head.

“What?” May says. She’s paused to look at him. “What. _What_.”

“Nothing,” Peter says quickly. “I just--I love you. Sorry. I probably forgot to mention it yesterday.”

May doesn’t look like she buys it for a second, but he knows May and he knows she is willing to let things go at a time like this. And she does.

“I’m here, Peter,” she says softly. “You can...look at me all you want. I promise you, I’m not going anywhere.”

\--

It’s not the nightmares that plague Peter, but the waking.

Reality moves like sludge around him. He comes back to consciousness with voices still ringing in his ears, _her_ voice latched onto the back of his brain like it was there this whole time and he’s only become aware of it.

 _Do you think it was an accident, Peter? Do you really think that? Wow, you’re more naive than I thought_.

“Stop it, stop it, you’re lying to me,” Peter whispers to the air. His tongue feels like sandpaper. Peach fuzz.

_Everything was by design. Why else do you think we had to disappear when we did? Why do you think they never found our bodies?_

“ _Stop_ , please,” Peter sobs into the material of his shirt where he’s shoved his arm against his own mouth.

He jackknifes from the bed and trips into the adjoining bathroom. Turns on the tap and ignores the slice of water over his wrists, slaps palmfuls of water onto his face.

The face that looks back at him when he lifts his gaze to the mirror is obscured by droplets and fog. He yanks the cuff of his sleeve over his fist and rubs the mist away from the glass. 

“Isabel, Isabel,” he mutters under his breath. It doesn’t sound right, but it sounds too close to home for him to dismiss it. “Isabel Parker. Isabel Parker. Peter--Isabel. Peter Parker. Isabel Parker…”

FRIDAY’s voice, muted but unexpected, startles him from the nearest speaker in the vanity. “Peter, your heart rate has been continuously increasing. Would you like me to wake anybody to help you?”

“No,” Peter snaps. His head falls into his hands and his elbows crash into the counter with a jolt. “Isabel-- _Isabel_ \--”

 _Only hitch in the plan was tracking you down after all this time. Changing your name--that was very inconvenient of you_.

“Peter,” FRIDAY tries again. “My security feed shows me that Boss is up and about on the fourth-floor balcony. Would you like me to--”

“ _No_ , FRI, dammit,” Peter says. A beat later, he tacks on, “Sorry, FRIDAY.”

“It’s all right, Peter. I can mute myself in your suite until you have need of my assistance.”

Peter doesn’t respond. He wavers there in front of his bathroom mirror, tilting his head in his reflection even as his breaths come short and heavy to him. Against his will, his brain fills in the image for him. Long brown hair around the sides of his face. Curly, just slightly so. Brown eyes light enough to resemble Kit Kat chocolate, the kind that’s straight from the freezer and faded around the edges. The strong cheekbones. Thin lips, crooked-toothed smile.

Buzzing begins to fill his ears. Peter slaps his hands over them and makes a split-second decision, beelining for the door and the elevator down the hallway.

Tony’s silhouette is ringed by moonlight when Peter stumbles through the french doors onto the balcony behind him. The man sits up, his hot chocolate sloshing over the rim of his mug in his haste to set it down on the folding table in front of him.

“Pete!” says Tony. “You okay? What’s going on? Why’re you up?”

Peter doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what he looks like to the man, but the way Tony is staring at him with his shoulders tense tells him he must be a sight. Wild-eyed, breathing heavily, circling one wrist with his other hand in his trademark nervous tic.

“Panic attack?” Tony asks quickly.

Peter shakes his head. Tony pulls out the other lawn chair with his slippered foot, and Peter sinks down into it next to him.

“Lemme ask you…” Tony licks his lips. “Are you able to talk?”

“Yeah,” Peter says. Just barely there.

“Okay, good. That’s--good.” Tony scratches his goatee. “Wanna talk about it? Or should I...dunno...spout the usual bullshit I spout until you talk?”

“No, I’ll--I’ll talk,” says Peter.

“Okay,” says Tony.

Peter hears the hum of a firefly’s wings from all the way down. What it’s doing all the way out here in Manhattan is anyone’s guess.

“My parents,” Peter starts out. His tongue feels like a sponge. His head like glass. “My parents...they’re dead?”

The gears are obviously cranking in Tony’s head. “Yes…?” he responds, just as quizzically. “Pete--what’s this all about? You told me they passed away in a plane crash.”

“Ben told me,” Peter corrects him. “ _May_ told me. Please, Tony--could you just--I dunno. Check?”

Tony is obviously on the verge of spewing a hundred or so questions and then some, but he trusts Peter with this as much as he trusts the kid with his life. And so he scoops up his phone, connects to FRIDAY’s databases and complies with Pete’s request.

Peter counts the breaths that hang between them.

“Yeah,” Tony says at least. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to say this, kid, but--they’re dead.” He angles his phone into Peter’s line of vision so he can see for himself.

“No, no, I know that article, I’ve seen that article. They never found them, Tony. _Tony_.” There’s a newfound urgency to Peter’s voice, one that puts Tony’s guts on edge. “Tony, they never found the _bodies_.”

“Peter,” Tony says, almost sharp, but still tempered. “What’s going on in that head of yours? Is this--what happened out there?”

The air burns as it leaves Peter’s nostrils. He fixes his gaze on Tony’s knees and the faint oil stains in his sweatpants there. He refuses to meet the man’s eyes.

“ _Peter_ ,” Tony tries again. Slowly. Fearfully.

“What did you find on her?” Peter asks. Eyes still on Tony’s pants, his toes. The ground. “Or Nat. What did either of you find when you were looking for me?”

Tony heaves a sigh. “Her name was Minnie Russo. An accomplished scientist, technically speaking. Two PhD’s, one in genetics and another in chemical engineering. She bounced around companies a lot because her contacts said she was unreliable and difficult to work with. Her second-to-last stint was with Oscorp, and then she got fired for losing a bunch of research--Nat has the details memorized, I just skimmed for general ideas--and. Yeah. She was last known to be working for this small HVAC filter production company when she snatched you. Couldn’t get a job with the big leagues anymore, or something like that.”

“Minnie Russo,” Peter whispers to himself, testing the words in his mouth.

Tony’s already caught on by now, because of course he has. He is a genius.

“Pete, whatever bullshit she fed you to mess with your head, it’s not true. She’s not--no. _No_. That woman was _not_ Mary Parker.”

Peter’s on the precipice. He’s on the edge of crying. He’s always crying these days, goddammit, and he hates it. He stops up his eyelids with the pads of his fingers. Tries to stabilize his elbows against his knees, but every part of him is coming unhinged.

“She was _not_ , Pete, I swear. Here, gimme your phone.”

Peter’s brain is like mush. Tony reaches into Peter’s pocket for him and pulls up Google Photos, and taps him on the side of his bicep.

“Kid. Look. Buddy, here.”

Peter drops his hand from one side of his face long enough to squint at the screen. There is the familiar family portrait of the three of them on top of the jungle gym, him, Mary, Richard, toothy and smiling. Mary’s hair is cut in a bob with fluffy bangs. She’s got a soft and a heart-shaped face and she looks nothing like Peter--but they did always say that Peter took more after his father. After Richard and Ben Parker.

“I don’t look like her,” Peter blurts out. “Look. Look. If I...imagine me as a girl, Tony. See the hair? The, the, the face?”

Tony stares at him.

Peter looks at him and he feels like he’s going insane. “Tony. She knew my name. She knew my _birth_ name. She called me Isabel.”

“School records,” Tony explains quickly. “You didn’t transition until you were twelve. C’mon, Pete, anyone with Oscorp’s connections could’ve dug that up.”

“You saw her. You--you broke in and I know you saw her. Look at me and tell me we don’t look alike.”

“You both have brown hair and brown eyes, the most common combination in America. _Peter_ , why are you so bent on believing her? What are you...what are you not telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“Cut the bullshit, kid. You don’t believe half the stuff Steve says in meetings even when he’s level-headed, and yet you’re willing to swallow this woman’s story?”

“She knew me, okay?” Peter bites out. “She knew--she knew my favorite color. She knew about this candy I ate obsessively when I was really little. She knew my name was Isabel. She--she--”

Tony’s heartbeat quickens, despite himself. “What? She what?”

“She said it was supposed to work differently on me.”

“What was?”

“The spider bite.”

Tony sits there, slack-jawed, not following.

“She was supposed to introduce herself to me the proper way after being in hiding for so many years, ’cause she was working on this top-secret government project with the arachnid radiation, and there were other countries that were after their research, her and my dad, and she said they ended up find him and killing him...and she was looking for me almost the whole time, but she couldn’t find me for a while because we’d moved and then I’d changed my name and my gender and then Ben died and we moved again… The radiation project wasn’t ready, it wasn’t finished when I got bitten. It wasn’t supposed to give me superpowers, it was supposed to be some kind of, some kind of immunization technique against food poisoning and crop engineering or whatever, but it messed up, it messed _me_ up, and she lost the spider and so she started searching for me again and…”

Tony’s hands come down heavy and solid on Peter’s shoulders to calm him, to draw him back from the edge of the cliff before he works himself into another panic. But Peter barrels on even as Tony opens his mouth to speak, because once the kid has unlocked the remembrance of the horrors of those seven nights chained up in a basement, there is no going back. 

“That’s why she had to know. She had to find out how much poison I could take, how long it took me to heal after every meal… I knew something was off the first time she gave me the mashed potatoes but I was already so hopped up on drugs I couldn’t tell right from left. I started throwing up, and she was taking notes and measuring my temperature--”

_A hundred and three? Oh, my, you run a little hot there, don’t you, Izzy?_

“--I wouldn’t eat after that. I didn’t know what was up, I was so--fucking doped out of my mind that I couldn’t figure out until the second day. Then she started threatening me to get me to eat, but I wouldn’t, I _wouldn’t_ , so she started choking me and--sometimes she covered my nose with a rag until I--Tony, I--”

Tony’s hands tighten on the rounds of Peter’s shoulders. Neither of them know if it’s more for Peter’s benefit or for Tony’s, to keep them both upright, clutching each other in the night. Tony’s face has lost all color. And yet the words keep pouring out of the boy, ugly and tired, like vomit.

“I was so _scared_ ,” Peter whispers. He shakes. He shakes. “I was scared I was gonna die. It felt like she was shredding my insides. It was like, like lava inside me, or fire, I thought I was bleeding from the inside out. I didn’t wanna die, Tony. I didn’t wanna. I didn’t wanna. I was _so scared_.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony chokes out. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry...we should’ve found you sooner…”

“Am I alive?” Peter gasps. “Mr. Stark--is this--is this real? Am I alive?”

“Yeah, Petey,” Tony whispers. “You’re alive. You’re not dreaming. It’s me, you feel me? It’s the real deal.”

“Sometimes I feel like I already died.”

“No freaking way,” Tony says fiercely. “I wouldn’t let you. God--even God wouldn’t let you. You’re alive, God, Pete, I’m so glad you’re alive. Death was too good for that bitch.”

Peter sobs into the September air. Tony doesn’t hesitate anymore. He pulls the kid to his quivering feet and scoops him into his lap. He’s heavy, pure muscle, but somehow he feels so small.

“My--concept of reality is like, all fucked up,” Peter sniffles. He buries his face into Tony’s shoulder and shoves the sharp end of his nose against his mentor’s collarbone.

Tony doesn’t answer him. Not directly. Instead he just pats the boy’s back and he murmurs, “I’m here. I promise, it gets better. Shh. I’m here. We’re all here--May, Pep, Harley, me--heck, even Happy, I got the guy on speed dial and I bet you he hasn’t slept a wink since we found you. We’re here.”

“You’re real?” Peter asks.

“Yeah, kid,” Tony says softly. “I’m real.”

\--

Turns out May heard the whole thing. She was standing in the doorway on her way to the bathroom when she saw them, and she heard the entire thing.

All it takes is one look at each other in the kitchen the next morning, and Tony can see in her eyes that she knows. And that she must have spent the better half of the night weeping, if her rat’s nest and red-rimmed eyes behind her smudged glasses are anything to go by.

“Tell me he’s gonna be okay,” she says, in lieu of _good morning_.

Tony hands her her coffee mug. “He’s gonna be okay, May.” He speaks it with as much will as he dares to push into it. “I’m making some calls. Sam’s probably our best bet, but anything could happen, sometimes people vibe when they talk about this sort of stuff, sometimes they don’t. I’ll--give him options. A whole smorgasboard of options.”

“Yeah,” May says. She pushes the glasses up her nose and stares down into her swirl of mocha like it’s the last thing on earth she wants to consume now. “Yeah, that’s...thank you. It’s a lot.”

“He went through a lot,” Tony agrees grimly. “Christ, I…”

May watches him silently as he slips his hands into his pockets and leans back against the counter. A moment later, she shuffles forward to join him. They both blink up at the ceiling light.

“Seven days,” May whispers. “She did so much damage to him in seven days. The drugs, the name--God, I don’t even wanna begin to imagine the kind of effect on his dysphoria… And the stories. The _stories_. The--the _poison_.”

Tony swallows. “Guess we know why now he won’t eat soup or mushy foods.”

May laughs. It’s hapless and half-crazed. She hides the top half of her face with her hand.

“He’s a good kid,” Tony says.

“He’s a _great_ kid. He didn’t deserve this.”

“You’re preaching to the choir. I’m with you a hundred percent, May.”

“But he’s strong,” May goes on, almost to herself, as if Tony hasn’t spoken. “He...he’ll get through this.”

“Sure he will,” Tony acquiesces. “He’s Peter Parker.” Peter Parker, he says. Not Spider-Man.

Tony tilts his head and studies May from the side of his eye. She’s a mess, objectively. Bathrobe on inside out, knuckles white with their grip around her mug. Her face splotchy and her hair knotted in the oddest places. But she is strong, she’s steel, she is exactly the same brand of perfect that Peter is even as the kid is in the middle of a breakdown.

They’ll heal. The Parkers have never known another way.

\--

“Cucumbers.”

“Check.”

“Ranch.”

“Check.”

“Cheetos?”

“Yeah-huh.”

“Doritos?”

“Double fucking check.” Peter tosses the second crinkly bag into their gargantuan picnic basket, his face awash with glee.

Harley snickers at him. “This is, like, the most keto picnic anyone’s ever seen.”

“Shut _up_ , Keener. I was force-fed cyanide through a funnel, I deserve to eat whatever the fuck I want.”

“And eat whatever the fuck you want, you shall,” Harley crows, hoisting an imaginary wineglass in a toast. “Amen to that.”

Peter shoves a couple of juice boxes in the last free corner of the basket-- _We can be toddlers again, you know. As a treat_ \--and snaps the whole thing shut. He plants his elbows on the counter and rests his chin on his fists, staring contentedly at Harley.

Harley’s got his eyes closed even as his mouth curves in a teasing smile. “Two bros, five feet apart ’cause they’re _so_ gay--”

“I was actually staring at the pimple on your nose, but now you’ve just ruined it,” says Peter.

Harley huffs. “After the cyanide joke? What a serious letdown, Parker.”

Peter flicks him in the ear.

“ _Yow_ , actually,” Harley complains. He pops open an eye. “Seriously, though. I’m glad you’re all...y’know.” He gestures roundly with his hand. “Chill. About joking about the whole thing.”

“Oh, no, I’m actually the farthest thing from chill,” Peter corrects him with disturbing cheer. “You taught me how to repress my PTSD with mind-numbing humor.”

“You got that from Tony. Although, to be fair...he did get that from me. So. All roads lead to Rome and all that crap.”

Peter snorts softly in response. When he doesn’t offer another witty rejoinder, Harley straightens and turns to look at him fully. The other boy is digging his thumbnail into the edge of the granite, scraping off an imaginary spaghetti sauce spill there.

“Harley?” Peter says at last. His voice sounds young. Scared. A bit dangerously so.

“Yeah?”

“I’m--glad you’re here.”

Harley grunts in acknowledgment.

“No, like, really. Ned’s in college and so is MJ and--this all happened at the beginning of the semester and I _get_ why I need to take time off, I really do, ’cause my whole reality is warped now apparently and I’m all fucked up…”

Harley rolls him a look.

“...I’m in, uh, recovery,” Peter amends reluctantly. “So I get it. Why I need to stay here till winter break and all. And I love that Tony’s here, and May got to move in to be closer to me and everything, but--yeah. I know college didn’t work out the way you wanted it to, and you don’t really wanna be here in the Tower any more than I do, but. I’m still glad. That we ended up keeping each other company.”

“I’m a bum,” Harley says lightly. “I have no choice. Plus, now I have more time to infect you with my sense of humor and exploit your cute baby face for my YouTube channel.”

“You’re not a bum,” Peter insists.

“Yeah, okay, sure. I’m an _influencer_.”

Peter stares at him. “You have twenty subscribers, you don’t influence _shit_.”

They take one look at each other and double over laughing.

“Fuck you,” Harley cackles. “Actually fuck you. I’ve got twenty _thousand_ subscribers. Get on my level of shallow charisma.”

Peter’s still shaking, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. This time, the good kind. The only kind he likes.

“Fine,” he chokes out. “Fine. I’m doing the Whisper Challenge with you and I’m gonna laugh like a donkey in your face for every freaking round.”

Harley lays a hand dramatically over his chest. “It’s all I ever ask of you, bro.”

Peter tugs on Harley’s earlobe. “It would be my honor, bro.”

Harley says something then, but Peter doesn’t register it, because he’s busy watching the other boy’s cheeks, the other boy’s teeth and how the front incisor twists over the other one. He is busy drinking in the sight of Harley’s sandy hair and purple hearing aids and his favorite threadbare shirt embroidered with the yellow chick on the pocket. And Peter is marvelling in the fact that he doesn’t hear anything except Harley’s voice and Harley’s laugh, and there’s nothing else in the back of his brain, it’s all quiet there for now, and it’s all real, real, _real_.

She’s not his family. She never was--only an imposter and nothing more. Peter’s parents are dead, somewhere, and he misses them something fierce, but he’s starting to know again, little by little, that they went down with that plane in a legacy of nothing less than love and bravery. And Peter’s family, the family of here and now, they’re here. They are now. He has his jittery, motor-mouthed engineer dad with a ticking heart and a hero complex, who learned to say _I love you_ against all odds. He has his aunt who can’t cook bricks to save her life but would pick up every last piece of him and put him back together with her own two hands. He has Ned, who knows him like the back of his hand and whose arms feel the safest to run into. He has MJ, who keeps his feet on the ground and his head out of the clouds. And he has Harley, _Harley_ , one mess of a boy who curses too much and jokes about everything, who doesn’t give himself nearly enough credit, but when they’re around each other he makes everything seem okay.

This is the family Peter knows, the one that would walk to the ends of the earth and beyond for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: Peter deadnames himself; his kidnapper also deadnames him; there's a scene in the middle where Harley helps Peter administer his testosterone shot; brief descriptions of anxiety and panic throughout; and descriptions of drugging and physical violence.
> 
> Since my brain just Does Its Own Thing sometimes and hyperfixates on one fic when I have plans of finishing another, it looks like the last chapter of my Victorian AU will be pushed back a couple days. Apologies for that! But more to the point, I hope you enjoyed this? (Did you like it? Did you like being hurt? Huh?? Did you like it when I made Peter cry _multiple times_ \--)
> 
> ok I'm done now. Please send me all and any feedback! Scream at me if ya will! This is like my new magnum opus I think and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it <3 thank you so much for reading!! -kaleb
> 
> muh tumblr: theoceanismyinkwell  
> muh insta: kc.barrie


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